"Yes, there's a great change in her," admitted Peyrol with a heavy sigh. "This lieutenant," he continued after a pause, "has always behaved coldly to her. I noticed him many times turn his face away when he saw her coming towards us. You know what these epaulette-wearers are, Catherine. And then this one has some worm of his own that is gnawing at him. I doubt whether he has ever forgotten that he was a ci-devant boy. Yet I do believe that she does not want to see and hear anybody but him. Is it because she has been deranged in her head for so long?"
"No, Peyrol," said the old woman. "It isn't that. You want to know how I can tell? For years nothing could make her either laugh or cry. You know that yourself. You have seen her every day. Would you believe that within the last month she has been both crying and laughing on my breast without knowing why?"
"This I don't understand," said Peyrol.
"But I do. That lieutenant has got only to whistle to make her run after him. Yes, Peyrol. That is so. She has no fear, no shame, no pride. I myself have been nearly like that." Her fine brown face seemed to grow more impassive before she went on much lower and as if arguing with herself: "Only I at least was never blood-mad. I was fit for any man's arms. . . . But then that man is not a priest."
The last words made Peyrol start. He had almost forgotten that story. He said to himself: "She knows, she has had the experience."
"Look here, Catherine," he said decisively, "the lieutenant is coming back. He will be here probably about midnight. But one thing I can tell you: he is not coming back to whistle her away. Oh, no! It is not for her sake that he will come back."
"Well, if it isn't for her that he is coming back then it must be because death has beckoned to him," she announced in a tone of solemn unemotional conviction. "A man who has received a sign from death – nothing can stop him!"
Peyrol, who had seen death face to face many times, looked at Catherine's fine brown profile curiously.
"It is a fact," he murmured, "that men who rush out to seek death do not often find it. So one must have a sign? What sort of sign would it be?"
"How is anybody to know?" asked Catherine, staring across the kitchen at the wall. "Even those to whom it is made do not recognize it for what it is. But they obey all the same. I tell you, Peyrol, nothing can stop them. It may be a glance, or a smile, or a shadow on the water, or a thought that passes through the head. For my poor brother and sister-in-law it was the face of their child."